


The way forward

by Yossk



Series: Something Else [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Natasha Romanov-centric, POV Natasha Romanov, Partly written before Endgame, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Avengers (2012), Timeline 2009 - post Endgame, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-26 13:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30106452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yossk/pseuds/Yossk
Summary: Her passenger snored gently in the backseat. She tapped her fingers irritably on the wheel, focusing on the pool of tarmac illuminated by her headlights. After fifteen hours on the road, the safehouse was almost in touching distance.They hit a pothole and the car jolted. There was a grunt of surprise from behind her.“Sorry.”She wasn’t, particularly....Things change, slowly. And nothing changes in an instant.
Relationships: Bobbi Morse & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Laura Barton & Natasha Romanov, Lila Barton & Natasha Romanov
Series: Something Else [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2215374
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I've been sitting on this for a long time! I'm still not sure it's quite _right_ but at least it's finished. Hope you enjoy the second part of the journey.
> 
> PS This will make a hell of a lot more sense if you read Something Else first.

_Remember when I had that weekend in Chicago last year? Yeah, with Letitia, when the plane got delayed like four hours coming back and I had six bag of chips for dinner. I told you about the show we saw, right? The Alison Bechdel one?_

_Yeah, it was awesome, I wish you could have come._

_So there was this song in it. It’s little Alison getting her first crush on a woman… Yeah, it is, it’s so kind of sweet and joyful and- but anyway, that’s not the point. Because I didn’t exactly have a crush on her. But there’s this line she sings and it’s just, it’s exactly how I felt when I met her, you know?_

I know you.

…

_2009_

They crossed the border at Leselidze, slipping through the darkness onto Russian soil, trees closing in as the road to Sochi rolled out before them. Natasha shifted in the driver’s seat, a strange mix of relief and discomfort settling within her. Even this far south, Russia had its own feel. 

Her grip tightened on the steering wheel, a prickle creeping down the back of her neck. 

She consciously relaxed her fingers. It was a quiet road in a country the size of a continent. She was just a traveller, a speck of sand in the dessert. Just passing through.

Her passenger snored gently in the backseat. She tapped her fingers irritably on the wheel, focusing on the pool of tarmac illuminated by her headlights. After fifteen hours on the road, the safehouse was almost in touching distance.

They hit a pothole and the car jolted. There was a grunt of surprise from behind her.

“Sorry.” 

She wasn’t, particularly. The snoring had stopped.

Dr Darvish (Kamran, he’d insisted she call him) blinked a few times in the rear view mirror, looking around, trying to place his surroundings, “Are we close?”

“Half an hour, maybe.” 

He nodded in satisfaction and settled back against the window, eyes closed. Well, they’d both had an early start. Natasha rolled her eyes at no-one but the water. The dark expanse spread out on her left under a blanket of stars that went on forever. Russia pressed in on one side, but on the other, the open water all the way across the Black Sea.

…

“Where are we?”

Darkness was pressing in now, deep and heavy. 

“Novorossiysk. Just past.”

His forehead furrowed, concern and the edge of fear. Natasha put him out of his misery.

“Safehouse was compromised. They left a signal on the road.” She smiled reassuringly, “Don’t worry, Dr Darvish. It happens. Just a precaution. We’ll be in Chornomorsk tomorrow. You can go back to sleep.”

He was awake now though, eyes wide, bright and alert, “We aren’t stopping?”

“No.” She paused. They were a long way from Sochi. No sign of a tail. “Although I could do with a bathroom break.”

He relaxed a fraction as she’d intended, at the crack in her business-like facade. But she did, truly, need a break. Her hands were cramping and her back was stiff and staring at the same pool of light for six hours wasn’t doing anything for her powers of observation.

Natasha pulled over carefully under a copse of trees, stepping out into a stiff breeze whipping her hair about her face. Away from the coast, the landscape was featureless and uninteresting, tamed and cultivated and largely flat. They could have been anywhere. She found a sufficiently wide tree trunk and relieved herself behind it, ears pricked for decelerating engines over the rustling of leaves and grass. But the world was quiet. 

She opened the trunk and perched on it, legs tucked up, rooting in her bag for food. Dr Darvish offered her the box of Baqlava his sister had pressed on him before they left, crisp and sticky with syrup soaking into its cardboard shell. She shook her head, pushing it back to him, “Keep it. I have plenty.”

“Food is for sharing.”

She hesitated, “If you insist.” and gave him half a smile, taking a piece, syrup trickling down her fingers, sugar and rose water in the air. She studied his face out of the corner of her eye. What was he thinking? In the middle of nowhere in the dead of night, his life in the hands of a stranger he’d known for barely a day. He’d been quiet, hard to read, perhaps remembering the family he’d left behind.

He was watching her too.

“You’re not American.”

“No.”

“You speak Farsi too well.”

She smirked, gathering food back into her rucksack and sliding to her feet on the tarmac, “Time to go.”

They were back in the car, barelling through the fields, smooth tarmac threading their way towards Kavkaz and the Crimea.

…

The sun rose slowly, pink and orange washing over the fields. Natasha was alone again, the only conscious soul for miles around as they passed Feodosia and on into the heart of the Ukraine. The ferry crossing had been tense: papers checked and scrutinised by bleary-eyed border patrol, Dr Dharvish stiff and silent, a tremour in his fingers as she’d answered their disinterested questions. He’d fallen asleep again after, adrenaline leaking away as they drove empty mile after empty mile, the rumbling of the engine and the never-ending winter darkness lulling him away.

He’d gotten talkative, on the crossing, nerves leading to pointless chatter. He hadn’t expected any answers from her, he knew the deal, but it hadn’t stopped him asking. She’d spun him something with her eyes, pulled apart Maria Hill and Bobbi Morse and Melinda May, created a life to fit under her enigmatic smile and one word answers. Created a lie that she didn’t even tell. 

He’d sold her a story in exchange: a mother and father, three sisters, husbands, children, all left behind. And a daughter already in the States. His posture had lifted, as he spoke about her. He was traveling towards something, not just running away, finding a sort of purpose, a light at the other end. 

She squinted into the darkness. God, she was bored of driving. During the day, for a few hours, somewhere with a nice view and space for speed, she could enjoy it, feel the freedom of the landscape whipping past. But the darkness was wearing, the long hours of inactivity, the world shrinking to a narrow pool of yellow light. She squinted at the sun rising in her rear view mirror, blinked to clear her head. Escort jobs were crap. Especially alone.

…

They had breakfast and lunch on the road: the same unimaginative rations, lifted only by the sticky sweet baqlava Dr Dharvish seemed determined to string out across the miles. With the daylight their world had opened, fields forever on either side and a cold blue sky overhead. He stared out of the window, watching the country morph and change as they rolled through it.

Natasha’s attention was wearing thin, her patience at its end. They’d have to stop tonight, safehouse or no. Her eyes itched with ignored tiredness and she blinked hard, focusing again on the road ahead, on each of her mirrors in turn. She’d been running solo more and more lately. She clenched her fingers on the wheel. She missed having someone at her back. 

She shifted in the driver’s seat, pushing the thought aside before she could follow it to its end, before she could sink too deeply into three years of guilt and misaligned intentions. Her eyes darted from road to wing mirror to the sea, sparkling below them through the driver-side window. 

The sun was lowering, reflecting off the ribbon of tarmac stretching out ahead. She squinted, ineffectively adjusting the sun visor as the sky grew orange. Behind her, darkness was spreading through her rear-view mirror, her pupils taking precious seconds to adjust as her eyes flicked between them. Driving directly into the sunset had not been her intent, and yet here she was. There were no turn-offs for miles, no options but straight ahead. It was safer than stopping. A car approached slowly behind them, a shadow silhouetted in the semi-darkness.

She watched it as her mind drifted back to Barton, like a marble rolling to rest at the bottom of a slope. Or falling in a pit. She wasn’t sure which comparison she liked best. She wrenched it away. The sign to Odessa reared up ahead, fading behind as the car approached to overtake.

Natasha blinked, squinting at her mirror, forcing her eyes to adjust whilst the sun blared orange ahead of her.

There was a flash, a strange reflection where none should have been. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

“Get down.”

She braced. 

Two sharp cracks rent the air. Her rear tyres spun out beneath her. She fought with the steering wheel whilst Dr Dhavish gripped his seatbelt, eyes wide with fear in the mirror.

“I said down.” She fought for control. The car behind was gaining on them. The edge of the road disappeared and they were bouncing down the cliff, the crunch of metal and grit and gravel laid over with the steady rush and roar of the approaching sea. 

Bracing against the steering wheel, she landed bruised but intact, water lapping at their remaining tyres as she scrambled for the Glock strapped to her thigh.

Bullets peppered the passenger-side door, tearing through it like paper. She dove out the opposite side, opening the rear door and dragging the doctor out with her.

“Stay down. Behind me.” She hissed and he obeyed without question, inches deep in water, sand sliding beneath their feet. She glanced behind and above, searching for movement, for the team descending to pin them down, to clean up.

Nothing. Just a lone figure, blurred through two shattered car windows, silhouetted against the sun.

She sighted over the car, fired once, twice, three times. He kept coming, discarding his weapon, a hand reaching towards his belt. Her stomach dropped.

“Run!”

She dragged Dr Dharvish by his coat, sliding over wet sand. The grenade whistled through the cool twilit air. Barely yards away, the car exploded, shrapnel flying as they dove to the ground, hot air rushing overhead and something bouncing hard against her back.

Natasha swore, swallowing the grunt of pain. She twisted, her finger curling on the trigger as the air cleared. They needed higher ground. She scrambled backwards. The bank slid away beneath her feet. 

He was approaching, deadly fast without running. Sunlight glinted off one arm. An inexplicable shudder buried itself in her gut. 

They had no cover. Pinned by freezing water and treacherous sand and the steadily approaching darkness. But he wasn’t shooting, just loping inevitably closer.

Dr Dharvish was standing behind her, surprisingly steady. 

“We are going to die.”

Her finger tightened on the trigger, “Not necessarily.”

He smiled, faintly. “You’re Russian.”

Her eyebrows rose. It didn’t matter now. “How did you know?”

“You swore.”

The figure was closer now, in shouting distance, still no weapon drawn. His left arm was metal, rippling beautifully in the sun, the source of the strange reflections. A mask obscured his face, long straggly hair and dark unreadable eyes. What did he want? To kill, or intimidate. She couldn’t yet tell.

She lowered her weapon, forcing herself to relax. They weren’t dead yet. There was room for maneuver. 

“Soldier!” She shouted. It was the way he moved.

He paused, almost imperceptibly, and then continued. Five, four, three, two, one loping strides to halt in front of her. “Move aside.”

Her eyes widened. Russian. His voice, muffled beneath the mask, was gruff and expressionless and his accent held a hint of something familiar that she couldn’t quite identify. 

She held still, assessing him. He didn’t reach for a weapon. He just… waited.

“You are not my mission. Move aside.”

“What is your mission, soldier?” 

“Kamran Dharvish is a traitor.” He recited it, a mindless monotone, his eyes never straying from the Glock held against her thigh. A chill ran up her spine that had nothing to do with the freezing water soaking through her boots. A spark of recognition. This wasn’t a man, in front of her. This was a tool.

“What is your cause?”

“We will bring order. Move aside.” 

She remembered, underground in a London tube station, the same words echoing as warm air rushed through the tunnels. 

“You seemed less concerned about my safety when you threw that grenade.”

He blinked. His hand twitched. Dr Dharvish’s breathing was shallow and fast. He’d shifted, nothing more than a ripple in the water but the dark eyes above the mask narrowed in suspicion.

Her hand was resting lightly on the knife at her back, moved there breath by steady breath. She needed a distraction, anything.

A car passed above them, headlights bright and engine loud. It would do.

Lightning fast, she whipped the knife through air. There was a crack and a pain deep in her gut. She looked for the soldier’s body, water sloshing and red tendrils streaking the water, but he’d moved, somehow, three feet to the left and it was _her_ body creating ripples in the waves, blood mingling with the salt and the seaweed as her legs gave way and her jeans soaked through.

She blinked, languidly. He was gone. A distant, barely-there shadow in the greying darkness. She pressed a hand to her abdomen. Blood seeped between her fingers and pain stabbed through her back.

They had to get out of the water. 

“Dr Dharvish?”

She turned, forcing herself upwards. More red tendrils in the sea. Except, she couldn’t see red anymore, it was all grey and blurred in the moonlight. His eyes were wide, a hole in his chest and a startled expression. He was gone.

Mission over. She’d failed. She left him there, floating in the waves, stumbled up a bank of tumbled rock, the beat of blood leaking from her gut and a roaring in her ears.

Out of the water she fumbled with numb fingers to unfasten her jacket, ignoring the pain in favour of what had to be done. She found the holes, entry and exit, and secured it tight around them. Her vision blurred at the edges. It was unlikely to be enough.

Back pocket. She groped, breathing ragged. There it was. Metal disk, glinting in the moonlight. Dr Dharvish, _Kamran,_ lay below her, water lapping at his coat. She could taste syrup and rose water, see his sister, his daughter, waiting for news. She looked away, turning her unused emergency beacon between her fingers. 

She didn’t have to die here. She might die anyway. She pressed her thumb-print to the reader. Three seconds and a green light. At least they’d find her body. At least… At least they’d know.

She forced her eyes open, the full moon burning her retinas as the sea churned steadily closer.

  


…

  


“You’re awake.”

Light brighter than moonlight pressed against her eyelids. She held them shut, cataloging scratchy sheets and something poking at her arm and the distinct, sharp, hospital smell of disinfectant. She reached back through the fog, probed the opiate-induced haze and tried to remember what had landed her here this time. Nothing. She turned her head instead.

Bobbi Morse, of all people, was sat in a chair by the window, one foot tucked up and a crumpled paperback held loosely in one hand.

Natasha blinked.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice was dry and cracked. A spark of memory: saltwater and a moonlit night.

“In Warsaw?” Bobbi smirked, “That’s need to know.”

Natasha raised one eyebrow. Or at least she thought she did.

“Oh, you mean right here? I made Barton go and take a shower. The smell was starting to scare away the nurses.”

Warsaw. Poland. SHIELD had a base in Warsaw. Hospitals were the worst. She fell asleep.

…

The smell of saltwater was pervasive, the sea lapping at the sand and rocks below. She listened, to the rush and swell and retreat of it. In, stop, out. The whistle of the wind in her ear and the moonlight pressing against her eyelids. She shivered, frozen to the bone, vision fading and senses disintegrating.

In, stop, out. Whistle.

What was whistling? She forced her eyes open, looked up and around, for trees, grasses, strange rock formations guiding the wind to music. But it was all sand and sea and tumbled stones, with a single ribbon of tarmac stretching on forever above her head. 

In, stop, out. Whistle.

She stiffened. There was a rock digging into her arm. She couldn’t shift it, couldn’t move. 

In, stop, out.

Whistle.

Grunt.

_Fuck._

She opened her eyes. Night had fallen, the room lit in harsh fluorescents. Where Bobbi had sat, Clint now was. Snoring.

She kicked the railing around the bed with one foot. A clang echoed and pain shot dully through her abdomen, muffled by morphine. He started, a line of tension running across his shoulders.

“What—Oh.” He relaxed, slumping back into his chair, “You’re awake.”

“Am I dying?”

“Not this time. What happened?”

“I got shot.”

He raised an eyebrow. 

She closed her eyes briefly, tongue heavy in her mouth, “Is this a de-brief?”

“No.”

“Then why are you here?”

He stiffened, forehead creased in a frown, a twitch in his fingers. She was too exhausted and on too many drugs to fight him.

“ _How_ are you here? The don’t send agents halfway around the world to check on each other.” She closed her eyes after, breathless, heart-rate strangely elevated. 

He relaxed a fraction, “I’m on leave.”

She fell asleep.

…

Next time Natasha opened her eyes, time hadn’t passed. 

“You—”

She stopped. It was daytime again. The room was empty.

She lay back and watched the ceiling overhead, examining the yellowing polystyrene tiles and cracked fluorescent light. Her head was clearer, the pain in her abdomen sharper. Her memory had returned. Not in a sudden epiphanous moment, but stealthily, sneaking in as she’d slept. She moved a hand, folding the rough sheet between her fingers, examining it, thread by thread, moment by moment.

The door squeaked. She stared at the ceiling, fingers moving over the folds.

“I don’t need a babysitter.”

His footsteps crossed the room.

“Go home, Barton. You should be with your kids.”

She didn’t know why she said it, why she wanted so desperately for him to leave her be. His shadow passed over her, white knuckles gripping the rail. “Nat.” He leaned forwards, forcing himself into her line of sight, “You nearly died.”

She narrowed her eyes, focusing on his face. His eyes were shadowed and his stubble had stubble. “You look like shit.” 

He backed off, running a hand through his hair so that it stuck up in three places. “I thought—” He stopped, his voice sharp, “You know what? Never mind. I’ve been having a great time hanging around this hospital for two weeks, but I’ll just leave now.”

Natasha’s stomach scrambled. _Two weeks._ Clint looked at her.

“Yes. Two weeks.” His voice softened, “You poured your guts into the Black Sea. Your heart stopped.”

“I—” She closed her eyes briefly, grip tightening on the sheet, scrabbling for the days she’d lost, nothing but a blank, empty void closing in on her. “I try not to pour my guts anywhere.”

His lip twitched, that time. Leather creaked as he sank back into the chair, body moulded to fit it. 

“What happened?” He tried again.

She shook her head, because she’d already told him, “I got shot. There was a man. He shot out my tyres, and then he shot me.”

Clint’s eyes narrowed, like he was sure there was more.

“I’m not bullet-proof, whatever Fury might think.”

“Well that’s painfully obvious.”

She tried to laugh, her abdomen spasming and her head spinning. She coughed instead. That was worse.

“You want ice chips?”

She nodded, wordlessly. Her throat was dry and cracked. She could still taste the sea. She let them melt on her tongue and drifted off again, her conversation with the soldat echoing around her mind as she slept.

…

There was a nurse next time, an actual de-brief, and a doctor at some point but she lost the order. He was business-like, no bedside manner to speak of and she preferred it that way. 

Clint left the next day. There was only so much time he could spend loitering around a SHIELD base in Warsaw when he was meant to be on leave with his family.

“Nat.” He came to see her before he left.

She looked up from her book. The door was open. He was uncharacteristically unsure, lingering in the doorway. She held the pages between her fingers and folded it shut. Her mind was skipping, stuttering like a scratched record, between him and the beach and the strange metal-armed soldier, the pile of memories she didn’t want to examine growing larger by the hour.

Still, he’d been here all this time. She gestured at him to come in, “Thanks.”

He smiled, and didn’t ask what for. He was looking better then when she’d first woken up, like he might have had a shower and changed his clothes, and eaten something other than cup-a-soup. There was a small crease between his eyebrows. He was working up to something. Her stomach solidified. Not again. She didn’t have the energy for this now. Her facade was slipping through her fingers.

He stopped by the bed, two hands on the rail, “You know what would be more fun than a SHIELD hospital?”

Her hand clenched on the book. “Stop. It’s still no.” 

She wasn’t normally so direct. Neither was he. She diverted and avoided and skimmed gracefully over the surface. A thousand reasons why now was a bad time, a thousand stories which didn’t lead to a farm in Iowa, two small children and a woman who saw far too much. But the story was getting harder and harder to spin. 

His eyes creased. She kicked herself. She hadn’t given him an opening like this in years. He wouldn’t shrink from pressing his advantage. He could play as dirty as she could. 

“Why?”

“You know why.” She watched the ceiling. 

“I don’t.” He was playing dumb. “This wasn’t the deal.”

She felt the hairs on the back of her neck. She turned to him, sharply, daring him to say more. She’d strangle him with her IV if she had to keep him quiet. 

“What deal?”

He swallowed, and shook his head minutely. “Fine, have it your way. There was no deal. So nothing changed.” He sat down deliberately, “So come to my fucking house and let my three year old bounce on top of you whilst you’re recovering from a gunshot wound. It’s not difficult.”

She closed her eyes. 

“They miss you.” He paused. “I know you miss them.”

She ran her fingers along the spine of the book, feeling the creases and the embossed lettering of its title. _My three year old._ There was no harm in admitting it to herself. She was afraid. 

“ _I_ miss you.” 

“You see me all the time.”

“You know it hasn’t been the same.”

How could it be so simple? After all this time spent pushing him away. He should be angrier, resentful. There was some of that, underlying the cracks in his voice, but it wasn’t what she’d intended it to be. 

He was pulling her back whilst she was too drained to defend herself. Her body ached and there was an empty, gaping hole in her abdomen and her head wouldn’t stay straight. She’d have suspected him of hiring the hit on her, but she could tell the difference between an arrow and a bullet.

_Damn you._

She couldn’t fight it, so she thew herself towards it instead. She pushed herself off the cliff whilst she couldn’t think fast enough to stop herself.

“Do you regret… anything?” she asked.

“No.”

She opened her eyes and watched his. No hesitation. He stared right back.

She’d never understand him.

“Ok.” 

“You’ll come?”

“I’ll come.”

He let out a breath, long and slow. 

“I’ll make the arrangements.”

She nodded and he left and she didn’t fall asleep.

…

_It’s sunny when Clint’s beat-up truck rattles up the potholed track to the farm. She remembers that particularly. Searing high overhead, the sky an infinite expanse of blue._

_Laura stands on the porch. Her hand twitches in half a wave as Natasha lifts herself carefully out of the car, stomach muscles cramping around her stitches._

_There’s a mop of dirty-blonde hair sticking out from behind Laura’s legs. She reaches down, lifts the girl into her arms._

_“Don’t be shy Lila, say hello to Auntie Nat.”_

_Natasha grips the car door and stares._

I know you.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Water rushed over the dam and dripped from the leaking pipe behind Natasha’s head. She studied blueprints of the helicarrier and ignored the ground as it shifted beneath her feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've shamelessly stolen a deleted scene from CA:TWS for this section - but it's a great scene.

  
_She just- She wasn’t like other adults, you know? And definitely not like Mum and Dad._

_She-she made me feel like I mattered. Asked me my opinion and stuff. Even when I was tiny and stupid and thought that I really could be an owl when I grew up. She asked me why. And what I’d do when I could fly._

_It kind of- It was important._

…

_2014_

Water rushed over the dam and dripped from the leaking pipe behind Natasha’s head. She studied blueprints of the helicarrier and ignored the ground as it shifted beneath her feet. The pain from her shoulder, the breathlessness and elevated heart rate were packaged carefully somewhere else. All she had to think about was this next mission. 

(This last mission, perhaps. It wouldn’t be the worst way to go.)

She thought that a lot. It didn’t always help.

The stairwell rattled. Fury had been making slow progress for the last twenty minutes. If she’d been a better person she might have gone to help. But that had never been who she was.

He hit concrete. His boots scuffed in the dust and he sank heavily against the desk next to her.

“I didn’t think you could make it up the stairs.” She said. There was a reason she’d dragged herself up them, and it wasn’t for the view.

“It wasn’t pretty.” His breathing was heavy. He shifted, reached under his jacket for something, “Here you go.” He handed her a case. A photostatic veil. “Hill just calibrated it.” 

As explanations went, it was even more transparent than the Russian translations emailed to Jemima’s flat in Illinois eight years before. She accepted it with the ghost of a smile, pretended not to see through the ruse. He was watching her. She stood to move away, but his gaze held her somehow, the nonsensical feeling of betrayal vying hard to be heard.

“I thought you were dead, Nick.”

Her voice was rough. It was the most she could say. Coulson, Fury, Shield. Her guy lines had been cut one by one and Clint could be dead by now, for all she knew. She’d warned him. Once Nick was dead, and SHIELD was chasing down Captain-fucking-America. No response. Yet. 

She held onto that yet.

“I had to keep the circle small. You would’ve done the same thing.”

“I know.” It was a good way not to die. It was the only way she knew. “That’s the problem.”

She broke his gaze and walked away. What had he wanted, coming up here? To drill into her, to shake her foundations? They had one focus now, one purpose, or they were all going to end up dead.

“Are you up to it, Natasha?”

She turned sharply, watching him, knowing him too well to read the words on the surface. He wasn’t questioning her ability, or the hole in her shoulder. Steve had had no idea what he was asking of her. Nick did.

“Yes.” She stopped. _No._ “Argentina—”

“There’s nothing on record.”

“Are you sure?” One thread would be all it took, one breadcrumb to lead them back to Iowa and Lila. And Hydra might have had that breadcrumb for years. She wouldn’t think about that. They might all be dead tomorrow, anyway.

“I’m sure.”

She watched him. He didn’t break eye contact. He never did. She cocked an eyebrow. “And you’d never lie to me, would you?”

“It’s your call.”

Trust was a fickle thing.

He left, slowly. She listened to his descent, to the clanging of the staircase, one step at a time. She’d make the call. She always did.

People would die because of it, people she knew. But other people would live. Information was currency and all they could do was level the playing field. 

And if there were any breadcrumbs, she’d hunt them down and grind them into the dust.

…

SHIELD fell and Hydra went with it. Chaos followed.

She heard from Clint, soon after the helicarriers went down. A one word message that loosed the tension in her gut. He’d gone to ground, waiting out the chaos, unable to risk coming home until the dust had settled and they could see how the land lay.

Steve recovered, slowly. Natasha watched from a distance. He had Sam for company, and Banner and Stark appeared sporadically. They couldn’t trust anyone. She wore out a plastic chair down the hall, tracking all who came and went, a stabbing pain in her gut every time she got word of a new death, a new horror unleashed upon the world because Hydra was running rampant and the good guys didn’t yet know who was on their side. Had there been another way? Could she have given them something useful, instead of a deluge of files that would take months, years to fully decrypt and understand? 

Stark emerged from Steve’s room. He strode past, a nod in her direction and words flowing, tripping over each other into the handset pressed to one ear.

Words stuck in her throat. Could she trust him? They’d fought together, he’d nearly died to save New York, but that meant even less now than it ever had before. Her phone beeped. _SHIELD holds the Iliad._ Hard plastic dug into her hand and she deleted it. Anonymous number. It meant nothing. They were drowning in lies upon lies upon lies. Whoever held the aircraft carrier, they weren’t SHIELD any more. 

Someone pushed a scalding plastic cup into her hand. She stiffened. Her attention had drifted.

“You look like someone who needs caffeine.”

Stark had returned, two dreary hospital coffees in hand. He dropped into the plastic seat beside her. 

She looked at the grey liquid, warmth eeking into her fingertips, and pulled a face. “Not this much.”

He took a sip and nearly choked, “I’m buying them an espresso machine. And hiring a couple of baristas. I’ll get Happy on it—” 

“What part of ‘not drawing attention’ is hard for you?”

“All of it?” He took her full cup from her and deposited them both in the trashcan three steps away. She missed the warmth. Her hands were stiffening. “Besides, two thirds of the Avengers are currently stationed at this hospital. We couldn’t draw more attention if we tried. Which I’m not, by the way.”

He sat down inelegantly, bouncing against her shoulder as he landed. She kept her breath even but his gaze caught on her knuckles whitening on the chair.

“You should be a patient.”

“I am a patient.” He raised an eyebrow. “I stared at them until they let me stay here.”

He smirked. Her lip twitched. She wasn’t stupid. Hauling Sam into a flying helicopter hadn’t done anything for the hole in her shoulder. And she needed it working again. In case she found the breadcrumbs.

“Tony.”

His other eyebrow rose. They weren’t really on a first-name basis. Not since her first-name had been Natalie.

“I need a favour.”

He frowned, “Shoot.”

“Jarvis. He can search the file dump faster I can.”

“What are you looking for?”

She pursed her lips. “That would have to be between him and me.”

Tony stretched back in the chair, contemplating, “Don’t you trust me, Romanoff?”

“I don’t trust anyone.”

A frown creased his forehead as she held his gaze. The bags under his eyes had grown, she was sure. The light above his head flickered distractingly just at the range of her vision.

She broke eye contact, staring across the corridor at the stark white wall, her eye catching on a weird grey mark tracing across towards the ceiling. “It’s not about trust—” She stopped. How could she explain without leaving a trail behind her? It wasn’t worth the risk. She shook her head, “It doesn’t matter.”

He shifted next to her, fishing his phone out of his pocket. 

“Hey, J.”

“Sir.”

Jarvis’ voice crackled from the handset. 

“Agent—” He paused, grimaced. Her gut ached with loss. “Ms. Romanoff needs a favour. Run some searches. It’s all top-secret hush-hush spy-stuff, so lock it to her voiceprint. Top-level encryption. I don’t even get access. Kosher?”

“Certainly, Sir. I shall wipe my memory banks once the task is complete.”

Natasha’s lip twitched, the tension across her shoulders beginning to ease. 

Tony shrugged, “This is a one-time thing though, got that J? She gets you for a couple of hours, run your searches, spit out the answers and that’s it. No keeping secrets from me. Just this once.”

“Yes, sir.” There was a bubble there, almost a laugh under the subservient tone. But she kept her mouth shut. A weight was lifting, as long as she could block out the voice telling her that Tony could always betray her too.

He handed her an earpiece, “Direct line to Jarvis. Drop it back at the tower when you’re done.”

She took it, slipping it casually into her back pocket with a nod. She was desperate to get somewhere private and hunt down the trail. The longer she left it, the more likely someone would find it before she did. And yet. She glanced down the corridor towards Steve’s room.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Tony followed her gaze.

She raised an eyebrow, “You destroyed all your suits.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got a pointy stick and a guy capable of turning into a green rage monster.”

Natasha’s lip twitched as the door swung open, and Banner appeared on the other side.

Tony flapped at her with one hand, “Go. We’ve got your back.”

She nodded. Her shoes squeaked against the linoleum as she stood up. 

“Thanks.”

He shrugged, “Any time.”

…

Jarvis scoured the data dump for any mention of her whereabouts in 2005 and 2006. There was a pile of mission reports, conflicting and misleading about as much as she would have expected from SHIELD’s obfuscated record-keeping. The ‘Argentina mission’ was in there, most of the details redacted. Holed up in her living room, she dug deeper, through layers of encryption, dead-ends and misleading details. The false story was just possible to put together, confusing enough to be believable. 

Natasha ran a hand through her hair, fingers snagging through it. She reached back to braid it and pain shot through her shoulder, dragging her back to the present. 

No news really should have been good news. But without a lead to chase down, all she could do was wait to see what she’d missed. She hadn’t called Laura yet. She needed to.

“Will that be all, Ms Romanoff?”

Jarvis’ voice was loud in her ear. 

“I’m not sure. Hang on a second.”

She leant back against the sofa, the cotton rough beneath her fingers.

“Give me my medical records. Tests, hospital stays. Anything.”

Her appointment with Dr Canton was there, but the notes discussed irregular periods and headaches. The best lies were the closest to the truth.

Ok, what else. _Where else?_ She dug her fingers into the sofa.

_Who'd known she was pregnant?_ Clint. Laura. Fury. She hesitated over Nick, but mentally moved all three of them far down the bottom of her list. Dr Canton had known who she was, but thought she’d had an abortion. And Natasha had been keeping tabs on her ever since. She’d follow her up, quietly, later, but she was low-risk for now. 

The fifth was the mid-wife, a face she just barely remembered. Clarissa Hendridge had never known her name, had been recruited by Nick and told she was in witness protection. Natasha had Jarvis search her name, her profession, cross-reference the dates and the location of the Barton farm. Nothing hit. If she’d had connections to Hydra, the answers weren’t there. She’d follow her up later, too.

She stood up, pacing the living room in short strides. Those were the obvious holes, the ones she’d always known. Could there be anything else?

“Jarvis, show me security footage at the Triskelion. 21st August 2005. I arrived about 7am. Went straight to Fury’s office. Follow me.” 

Her memory of that morning was curiously fragmented. There were moments that stood out starkly: the split-second lift of Fury’s eyebrows, the chill in the air as she’d entered the gym, the scalding water pounding her skin afterwards. But there were whole conversations that blurred away, that she could only hope to grasp at the edges.

“Certainly.”

Her younger self moved through familiar corridors, the shadow of three helicarriers crashing through the windows surprisingly present in her mind. 

She entered Fury’s office and emerged a few minutes later, her fixed expression unchanged. She sparred with Morse in the gym, and Natasha winced at a grapple that would have injured both of them if Bobbi hadn’t caught it and compensated in time. A shiver ran through her. She’d been compromised. More than she’d ever realised.

She disappeared towards the showers, reappeared again a few minutes later, strode through the corridors to medical. The receptionist barely nodded as she waved her through. Natasha made a note, added her to the list to check out later. There were no cameras in the clinic rooms, or at least not in the official records. Jarvis had compiled the feeds from the corridor outside. The consultation was longer then she remembered, minute after minute ticking past. As the door to the examination room opened, another figure appeared at the end of the corridor, pausing as they clocked her and Dr Canton moving to the room next door.

Long blond hair and unmistakably tall: Agent Morse, her sharp eyes narrowed in thought. Natasha paused the footage, breathing out slowly between her teeth. It was nothing. And yet it was something. She’d been off her game, a little erratic. A visit to the doctor’s office before she’d disappeared for over six months, only to return mysteriously unwell. And Bobbi had partnered Clint, before Natasha had joined SHIELD and sporadically after. She didn’t know about the farm, but she was observant, and she knew his tells. Did she have enough pieces to put the story together?

And, more importantly, did it matter?

Natasha’s stomach turned over at the thought. She stood, staring out of the window, watching the occasional pedestrian on their lonely way home. A few days ago, she would have said no. Last week, she would have taken everything she knew about Barbara Morse, everything she’d observed over ten years of close-proximity, and said no, it didn’t matter. She’d have added her to her list, never lost sight of her, but she’d have expected discretion.

But today’s world was very different to yesterday’s. Every moment of the last ten years was wavering in an unfamiliar light. Her instincts crumbled to dust in her hands. Morse’s ambition, her need to tick boxes on a resume already spilling over with skills. Could that have lead her to Hydra? To the idea of brilliant order in place of chaos? Or her thread of steel, her willingness to do what had to be done. Was there a thrill of sadistic satisfaction buried unimaginably deep?

She gripped the window sill and pushed Bobbi’s name to the top of her list.

Her phone lit up on the table behind her. Every hour, on the hour, Laura called. And she’d keep on calling, for days if she had to, tension building in her voice until one of them finally picked up the phone.

Natasha reached out a hand and grabbed it.

“Hey.”

“Hi.” Her voice was smoother than she’d expected, well-tamed worry less present than it should have been.

“You’ve spoken to Clint?”

“Yesterday. And you’re all over the news.”

“I hope it’s flattering.” There was a deadened note in her voice, because it wouldn’t be. And she mostly didn’t care.

Laura laughed, a short choked sound, “It’s—” She paused, delicacy and honesty warring over the airwaves, “—variable.”

“Huh.” Natasha swallowed, resting her forehead against the cool glass windowpane. She was wrung out inside, “They’ll find things. Things you didn’t know.”

“I know.” Laura paused. 

A muffled screech filtered through the handset, a violent war for the television remote and the bright jingle of Lila’s favourite cartoon. Her acceptance was naive and yet reassuring. Life kept ticking onwards. Natasha just had to protect it. 

“I’m taking them on holiday.”

Her eyebrow quirked on instinct, a half-second before she verbalised her surprise, “You are?”

“Camping. No television and wifi for a few weeks.” Laura’s voice lowered, “Until this starts to blow over. It’ll go over their heads, for now, if we’re careful.”

She swallowed, her list of names scrolling through her mind like a ticker tape. She struggled to focus on Laura’s words. 

“Ok.” And then, belatedly, as the intention sank in, “Um. Thanks.”

Laura didn’t respond.

“Let me know where you’re going.”

“I will.” There was another pause. “Nat, would you like to come?”

Natasha closed her eyes. Even hesitant and heavy with meaning, Laura still threw words around as though they were nothing. _Like._ What did _like_ have to do with it? For one moment, she lay by a campfire with Laura and Clint, wood crackling in the smoke-filled air as Lila and Cooper chased each other through grass damp with recent rain.

And then, a familiar nightmare. A crack, or a scream or a heavy, pregnant silence. A sniper rifle and blood soaking the grass. Or, worse, footprints and a sleeping dart crushed in the dirt. Natasha, languid, frozen by safety, staring blankly into the flames. 

“I can’t.”

“Ok.” Laura couldn’t have expected any other answer, and yet disappointment tinged her words. “There’s an inquiry. They’re saying you’ll be called to congress.”

“Good of them to ask.” Natasha muttered, her mind moving forwards, wrenched away from the campfire to the fortress of silence she had to painstakingly rebuild. 

Jarvis’ voice was loud in her ear, “The additional footage is ready, Ms Romanoff.”

“Laura, I need to go. Let me know where you’re going.”

“Will do.” A pause. “Be safe.”

She rung off. Natasha turned the phone in her hand, twice, three times, before she cast it aside. “Thank you Jarvis.”

“Will that be all?”

“I doubt it.” She sat back on the sofa, diving into the files, “Get me everything you have on Barbara Morse.”

“Very good.”

Natasha narrowed her eyes, her focus tunneling, building up the story. 

Congress was going to have to wait.

…

Natasha’s knuckles whitened on a rusting bench, flecks of iron scraping under her fingernails and her gaze burning down the pavement. She watched as Barbara Morse left a research centre in Crosswell, her uniform buttoned up against the cold.She dropped a dog-eared paperback into her bag and followed behind, pushing the rage into a smoldering pit at the bottom of her stomach until her hands steadied and her heartbeat was perfectly calm.

They boarded a bus, twenty minutes downtown jammed in next to an old lady’s shopping, to arrive at a run-down apartment block with a sad-looking apple tree on its scrubby front lawn. Morse let herself in. The light came on on the third floor. Time echoed loudly. She might already be too late. She might already have told— Her pulse surged. She took a breath, counted, let it go.

A man strode up the path with a briefcase dangling loosely from one hand. Natasha slipped in after him with a smile and a muttered thanks, striding up the stairs with her face in shadow. Her lock-picks clicked in next-door’s lock, tumblers falling one by one. An alarm winked from the corner of the hall, disabled in a heartbeat by Stark’s gadgetry lodged in her pocket. She closed the front door and merged with the darkness.

She took ten silent steps towards the moonlight flooding in through a chink in the curtains, and a glass sliding-door onto a miniscule balcony with a wrought iron railing. The lock clicked loudly as she sealed it behind her. Natasha held onto the railing, ice seeping into her fingertips. She was running hot, burning up with the effort of thinking without feeling. 

There was a streetlight out down the street, a trashcan turned over and a hopeful fox nibbling at its contents. Morse’s TV flickered, muttering through closed curtains. Voices rose and fell and Natasha vaulted between the balconies, the soft tap of her soles on the rail muffled beneath them. Inside, bare feet scuffed on a polished wooden floor and cutlery chinked in a drawer. The kettle boiled and two teaspoons clinked against a mug. 

Natasha’s pupils expanded in the darkness. She fingered the knife at her wrist, her knuckles cooling on the flat of the blade. Wind batted at her braid, clouds rolling across the moon. The TV fell silent. The tap gushed water. The footsteps cut off with the faint squeal and click of a closing door. 

She counted heartbeats, keeping perfect time. A car pulled up outside, spewing its passenger onto the sidewalk before it growled far too loudly and rumbled away. The fox returned, scavenging leftover take-out to take home to its litter. Natasha wished it luck on its way.

Ten thousand heartbeats. The deepest part of the night, the air heavy with slumber. 

Natasha’s lock picks glittered in the moonlight. Click, click, click. She paused in the doorway, plotted out grey shapes in the darkness. A coffee table and sofa squatted directly in front of her, a breakfast bar and small open-plan kitchen between them and the front door. To her left, the door to the bedroom sat slightly ajar. 

The bed creaked. A figure rolled out, three steps through the doorway and a pistol was aimed at Natasha’s heart. 

“Romanoff?” Morse’s face was pale and eyes shadowed. Her voice was rough with sleep and laced with suspicion. 

Natasha studied her in the moonlight, looking for tells, for whatever it was she had missed. 

“What are you doing here?” Morse's hands were steady on the trigger, her weight balanced and her eyes never straying from Natasha’s face. She was searching, unsure if she was friend or foe.

Natasha turned and closed the door behind her. She flipped the lock, tumblers sliding and falling into place. “Checking up on old friends.”

Morse’s lip quirked, brittle and bitter, “Not many of those left.”

Natasha prowled around the coffee table and sank into the couch, jerking her head at the chair opposite, “Might as well sit down whilst we figure each other out.”

“What do you want?”

She jerked her head at the armchair again. The gun remained trained at her head. She leaned forward, hands clasped loosely between her knees, lulled by the comforting caress of hidden blades against patient muscle. She told a story. 

“I woke up this morning, and thought, you know where I haven’t been in forever? Delaware. So I got on Route 50, and crossed the bridge and drove through a bunch of small towns, and a whole lot of _nothing much else_ , until I found myself in Crosswell. Nice town, I thought. Odd place to build a scientific research centre, but nice nonetheless.”

Morse’s eyes narrowed. 

“So I decided to have a poke around. Not too difficult, when you know how.” She leaned forwards, “And, I’ve got to say, I’m not a fan of their decorating choices. Greek mythology isn’t my specialist subject, but doesn’t Hydra have more than one head?”

A car horn blared just below the window. Morse’s finger stuttered on the trigger, her hand tightening.

“Why are you here?” She repeated.

Natasha’s voice dropped and she fingered the knife tucked into her left sleeve, “Because I also saw you.”

Morse moved but Natasha was faster, relieving her of her gun before twisting and rolling out of reach towards the kitchen. Her fingers itched for flesh, for her hands around Morse’s throat. But going hand to hand was only going to result in a lot of noise and the last thing they needed was the neighbours calling the cops.

She stepped out of range, aimed the gun at Morse’s head, and then lowered it slowly towards her knee. She cocked an eyebrow. 

“Sit on your hands. Or I start with your kneecaps.”

Morse swallowed and folded herself onto the floor. Her breathing quickened as Natasha pressed the muzzle to her temple.

“Do you have anything to say?”

Her lip curled.

“Hail Hydra.”

A shudder ran through Natasha. So it was true. Another parasite she’d failed to notice. Not through any of the missions they’d worked together. Not through sporadic sparring sessions or their mutual disgust at Barton’s ability to wolf down SHIELD canteen food. None of it.

It didn’t matter. (Lila mattered). She clicked the safety back on and stepped away.

“Hail Hydra.”

Morse exhaled. “Thank god.” She stood slowly and turned the light on. Natasha blinked in the brightness, watching as Morse moved into the kitchen, pulled a glass from a cupboard and filled it from the tap. She’d died her hair: a dark brown that made her face look small and her eyes narrow. She stopped with her back to the sink, stared right at Natasha with a cold smile, “Nice move, getting all that data out. Every undercover Shield agent out in the open.” She whistled through her teeth. Her voice was harder than Natasha remembered. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“That’s no way to speak to a superior officer.”

Morse raised an eyebrow, fingers tightening on the glass, “Prove it.”

“Odessa, 2009.”

“Yeah?” She shrugged, “You lost an asset and nearly bled out into the black sea.”

Natasha smirked, pushing away the swirl of the ocean and the shifting sands beneath her feet, “I lost a SHIELD asset. You remember the de-brief.”

Morse looked blank.

“The man with the metal arm. Surely you know he’s been a Hydra asset for years?” She laughed cruelly.

“I don’t—”

“The Winter Soldier shot a man I was protecting. I didn’t die. What more proof do you need?” She spread her hands expansively. 

Morse’s throat moved as she swallowed, staring at the glass of water she was holding like it was a riddle she was trying to solve. Finally, she nodded, raised a hand in mock-salute. “What do you need?”

“Information. 2006. Argentina. What does that mean to you?”

Morse shook her head, “I didn’t have clearance for that. No-one had clearance to know about that.”

“I didn’t ask what you had clearance for. I asked what you knew about it.”

She sighed tightly, “You went deep undercover for…” she screwed her eyes up, staring at a point just to the left of Natasha’s shoulder as she tried to figure it out, “six or seven months? You were back in the city for a few weeks before you came back to base. Rumour had it you’d been exposed to an experimental weapon.”

“What did you think?”

She shrugged, “It wasn’t my job to think.”

Natasha scoffed internally, but let it pass. She could only push so hard. 

“What happened after?”

“There was a mission to London. You, me, Barton and Ward. Gonzalez told me you’d disappear part way through the mission. Not to interfere. I didn’t. We got the package, you went dark for a while.”

Gonzalez? More acid dripped in Natasha’s gut. He could be bull-headed. She’d taken it for principle, drive to do right. She’d wondered, ever since Zola’s tirade at Camp Lehigh, if that strange afternoon at Goodge Street station had been Hydra’s half-hearted attempt to recruit her. It didn’t matter now.

She nodded, “Good.”

Morse’s eyes narrowed. She was toying with the glass in her hand, steel turned to hesitance. “Natasha, I—” she swallowed audibly. Natasha started at the use of her first-name. “I was on the Iliad when SHIELD fell.”

“And?”

“With Mack, Hartley… and Gonzalez. We held it for SHIELD.”

Natasha blinked, her hand moving to the knife at her wrist. She had to be lying. It was just another layer of lies. “You’re working at a Hydra lab.”

“Undercover.”

“Who for?”

“SHIELD.”

“There is no SHIELD any more.”

“There’ll always be a SHIELD.”

Natasha put both hands on the counter-top, letting the breath out between her teeth. “I want to believe you. But I can’t trust my gut any more”

Bobbi’s lip curled, “Welcome to the club.”

They sat in silence for an endless moment.

Finally, Natasha spoke. “I sent a warning.” She closed her eyes, “Ten minutes before I blew their cover.”

Bobbi swallowed, “I gave up a barely used safehouse to keep mine. Turns out, it was occupied.” 

They connected for a moment, a tenuous fragile thread. Bobbi ran a hand through her hair, goosebumps standing up on her bare shoulders. “I’m pretty sure you’re not going to kill me now. So I’m going to put some more clothes on.” The ghost of a smile flitted across her face before she padded back into the bedroom in bare feet.

Natasha waited, staring at her hands on the counter-top, weighing chess pieces in her mind. Strategy was impossible when there was no level of acceptable risk. Her gut churned and she swallowed.

Bobbi returned, her footsteps muffled by socks and a cable-knit sweater over the camisole she’d leapt out of bed in. She started the coffee maker, pulling mugs out of the cupboard and filling the filter. 

“Black, no sugar.” It was an affirmation, rather than a question. A reassurance to herself that not everything had been a lie.

Natasha nodded. They waited in silence for the coffee to brew, Bobbi busying herself around the kitchen, finishing last night’s washing up and drying the glasses left on the rack. She poured the coffee and set it on the counter, pulling a stool out to sit opposite.

“2006.” Her voice was softer now, losing it’s hard edges, “I told you what I know.” She looked up at the ceiling for moment. Natasha waited, not daring to breathe. “I might have suspected… something. But I didn’t want to know. I _don’t_ want to know.”

Bobbi’s fingers fluttered, her thumb rubbing against her index finger as though spinning a phantom weight about it. She seemed to realise what she was doing and stopped.

“I just wish… I’d known it was coming.” She wasn’t in 2006 any more, “I could have spent more time. Savoured it whilst I had it.” 

Natasha swallowed, sipping slowly at the coffee that was turning tasteless on her tongue.

“Nat, is that enough? Is that what you needed?”

She knew. Maybe not everything, but she definitely knew. It doesn’t fill her with quite as much dread as she thought it would. “I guess it has to be.”

…

Three days later, Natasha watched from an adjacent building as Bobbi and another woman stumbled onto the roof of the research centre, gun shots ringing out behind them. She was scrambling from her hiding place, knives slipping into her hands when they both leapt out into thin air and were whisked away by a cloaked quinjet.

Natasha left through the shadows. Perhaps it was time to savour what she had.

…

_The stars are bright and Lila is warm against her. Bickering wafts over to them from Clint and Laura’s attempts to start the campfire, a musical sound that rises and falls with the wind._

_“When I grow-up, I’m going to go to space.”_

_“Don’t be stupid Lila. You can’t go to space.” Cooper is eleven years old, bundled up on her other side, and oh-so-knowledgable about the world._

_“I can! I can go to space, can’t I Auntie Nat?”_

_“Of course you can go to space Lila. Where would you go?”_

_She points with a determined finger, directly above their heads._

_“Good choice. I’d like to go to that one too. What do you think you’ll find there?”_

_“Space owls.”_

_Natasha smiles, “Space owls. I’d love to meet space owls.”_

_(Little does she know she’ll one day meet a space racoon.)_

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: this chapter is the main reason this has taken me so long to get finished. Trying to figure out how to get super suspicious Natasha and super suspicious undercover Bobbi on the same page was mental chess that broke my brain, and I'm still not sure if it makes sense...


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There were footsteps on the stairs inside. A pause before the door swung open and Lila stepped out to join her. 
> 
> “Can I—?” Her weight was on one foot, the other bouncing on its ball.
> 
> Natasha smiled, “Sure.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly: Thank you for coming with me on this weird and wonderful journey! As I was writing this, it became clear that I had more of a series of ideas stemming from a 'What if..?' than a coherent plot. So I've done my best to collate them into something that has some sort of theme or arc to it - but there's a few bits I'd written that got left out, or which were written pre-Endgame and then didn't make sense. I'll probably share some of those soon. :)
> 
> Secondly: My sincere apologies for the beginning of this chapter. I needed Natasha to survive Endgame without getting too distracted and tangled up in the plot details...

_Yeah, I know, I’m talking around in circles._

_The things is-_

_This is hard. I’m literally shaking. Yeah, I know, I wish you were here too._

_I found something. And-_

_It might not mean what I think it means. And I need to talk to her about. And if it’s true, it sort of changes everything, but it sort of changes nothing, if you know what I mean?_

_Yeah, I know._

_She’s out on the porch. I bet it’s cold. I’m gonna need a coat._

_Yeah, fine, I’m going!_

_I- I might not call again later._

_Love you too._

… 

_“Tell my family I love them.”_

_“Tell them yourself.”_

_On Vormir, Natasha ran, wind stinging her eyes, rock pounding beneath her feet. He’d never beaten her, not since that first time. He never would._

_An arrow sang._

_No._

_Don’t you dare._

_The explosion hurled her sideways and her body smashed against the rocks. Gunpowder and ash filled her nostrils and Clint was running, his eyes locking hers. She forced herself upwards, grasping her belt. Pain seared through her right knee, lighting up her spine, and that would have been fine, there’d have been more pain before it was over, but it betrayed her. It buckled beneath her._

_She screamed as she hit the ground. Her fingertips scraped raw as she scrambled towards the edge._

_Too late._

_Clint fell._

… 

2029

Natasha forced her eyes open, the memory six years old now, but still able to gut her insides with regret. All it took was a particular ozone smell, or a peculiar shade of sunset. She stretched her leg out on the steps, knee tight and painful after yet another surgery, using the sharpness to ground her in the present.

She was alone on the porch, a beer getting warm beside her. Laura and Nate were collecting Coop from the airport, and Lila was hiding in her room murmuring sweet nothings to her girlfriend, or whatever it was kids did these days. Fuck, she barely knew what kids did in _those_ days, now she had no hope. 

_I wish you could have seen this, Barton. They’re more grown-up than you ever were._

She waited for a sharp jab in the ribs which never came. She downed half the lukewarm beer and leaned back against the railing, feeling the breeze waft over her face and watching the cloud pass by overhead.

There were footsteps on the stairs inside. A pause before the door swung open and Lila stepped out to join her. 

“Can I—?” Her weight was on one foot, the other bouncing on its ball.

Natasha smiled, “Sure.” 

Lila sat next to her, feet one step down and her knees drawn up to her chest. 

“I donated blood last week.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow, “Oh yeah? How was it?”

She shrugged, “Kind of weird, but fine. I got good biscuits after.”

Natasha laughed, “That’s how they lure you in.”

“Have you ever been?”

“I can’t.” She smiled ruefully, “My medical history’s a little too patchy. And I’ve had a couple of transfusions.”

Lila nodded, looking thoughtful, “What’s your blood type?”

“B positive.” Natasha answered without thinking.

Air whistled out between her teeth, “Thought so.”

Natasha’s heart skipped as she turned to look at the girl (woman) beside her, “What do you mean?”

Lila’s hair had slipped out from behind her ear, a dusty lock of it obscuring her eyes. She was holding her hands clamped tight around her knees and her voice shook, “Mum’s O, and Dad’s A. And I’m AB.” She turned her head and the lock of hair fell back, the porch light illuminating her face, “That’s not possible.”

Natasha couldn’t seem to breathe properly. 

The porch and the steps and the farm all fell away and suddenly it was twenty four years ago in a tiny bathroom in Washington DC, a row of white sticks lined up on the edge of the bath tub and the world shifting beneath her feet. She’d been on borrowed time, waiting for the façade to crack, for SHIELD to understand what she really was. And if not that, then for the Red Room to come for its lost soldier. 

But the years had passed and SHIELD fell and the Avengers rose from the dust and fell and rose again, and somehow Natalia Alianovna Romanova became Natasha Romanoff and Tasha and Auntie Nat and she’d kept on living and kept on fighting. First out of habit and spite, and then because she’d found something more. 

Natasha sometimes wondered if, given five years or ten, she might have acted differently. If she’d been able to see a future where she had the power to make choices, could she have chosen the picket fence and sleepless nights and the school run and spelling tests? Would she have even wanted it? 

Lila shifted next to her. She’d been watching her silently for several minutes, whilst Natasha waited for her to speak, for questions or accusations or whatever it was she wanted to throw at her. But they didn’t come and suddenly it was obvious what she wanted. It was the only thing Natasha herself ever wanted: To know where she came from. To know who she was.

The tightness in her chest seemed to release, trapped air rushing out of her lungs in a long breath. She reached across the steps and put her hand on Lila’s, still gripped tight around her knees.

"Am I right?" Lila asked.

Natasha nodded.

“I—” said Lila, letting her hand drop, her grip now tight around Natasha’s fingers. She looked at her, and then looked away, across the shadows deepening over the lawn. “I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s ok.” Natasha paused, weighing the fragility of the moment. She knew what it felt like, to have the world spin away from under you. It was comforting to imagine the universes spawning off this moment of decision, to know that however wrong she got this, there was somewhere (probably) where it went right. “Nothing’s changed.”

“Easy for you to say.” There was an edge to her tone. 

“Ok, everything’s changed.”

“How are you so fucking calm?”

It took her aback, the fire in Lila’s eyes. “I—” She swallowed. She knew better than this. “I’m really not.”

“Good.”

Her fingers still gripped Lila's tightly, a tether holding them together. 

Natasha took a moment. Instinct was failing her. Even after all these years, there was a voice in her head, telling her to run away, to hide, to do anything and everything not to reveal herself. She picked up the bottle, still beside her on the step, and took a long swallow. 

Lila eyed her, “Tell me why.” Her tone was suddenly hesitant, “Did you and Dad—”

“No.” Her voice softened, “Nothing like that.” 

“Then what?”

“It’s a long story.”

“We’ve got ages.”

Natasha swallowed. There was so much to tell. Lila's knowledge of her early life was a children's story: _Auntie Nat worked for the bad guys once, and that’s why we always give people a second chance._ (But not a third, and definitely not a fourth). There’d been headlines, comments made at school, but with the singular self-involvement of the American teenager, she’d never seemed particularly interested in the details of any time before she came into the world. 

But there was more than that weighing on her tongue. There was Lila’s story: the parts she had a right to know. And then there was Natalia’s: the parts that Natasha hoarded silently for herself. The parts that she never wanted Lila to see.

She started with a question, “What do you know about me, Lila? Before you were born?”

Lila paused, eyes searching, “Um, you grew-up in Russia… I guess? And you spied for the government…?” Her voice rose at the end of the sentence, her uncertainty clear to both of them.

“I didn’t just work for them. I was raised by them.”

Lila’s face turned into a comical ‘o’ of surprise, and Natasha fought back the inappropriate desire to laugh. 

“What about your parents?”

“They were from Novgorod. But they died sometime in the ‘90s. I have a couple of memories… flashes, from before. But I never really knew them.” She smiled gently, “No doting grandparents I’m afraid.”

It was a shocking thing to say out loud, after twenty-four years of choking silence. Lila blinked fast a couple of times and squeezed her hand. 

“You hadn’t said it yet.”

“I’m getting there.”

They sat for a few minutes, the sun turning orange and stretching long shadows across the driveway. Natasha was crafting the story in her mind and simultaneously berating herself for doing so. But it had to be crafted, didn’t it? Lila had to feel secure, and loved and like she still belonged. Vomiting up twenty-five year old trauma wasn’t going to help anyone.

Lila shifted a little, her grip loosening around her knees.

It was now or never.

“I’d never had choices before I came here. I didn’t know who I was. Clint helped me.” It was such a small word for everything he’d given her. For endless patience and lack of judgment. For fighting her when fighting was the right thing and waiting when it wasn’t. “About eighteen months after I arrived, I’d had a hard day. I went out. I don’t know what I was looking for, but I met a guy in a bar and went back to his apartment.” She smiled, “I think that was my moment of delayed teenage rebellion. And then I was pregnant.” It was so utterly mundane in the midst of everything else.

“How old were you?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Were you scared?”

“Terrified.” 

She hesitated. Lila was militantly pro-choice, but there was a difference between _I support the right of every woman to terminate a pregnancy_ and _the foetus that became me was nearly terminated_. It was an emotional swamp and Natasha was ill-equipped to navigate it. She skimmed over it instead. A conversation for another time.

“I couldn’t have looked after you. I could barely look after myself. But Clint and Laura, they had all this, and Coop was ready for a little sister. It was the only thing that made sense. I didn’t know how— I loved you so much, right from the beginning.” There were tears in her eyes, emotion clogging her throat that had only grown as she’d gotten older. She used to think that maturity and experience meant control, meant blank faces and blank voices and a will of steel. But her walls were crumbling and she was _better_ because of it.

Lila had started to cry. Openly and unashamedly. She pulled a yellow handkerchief from her back pocket and blew her nose loudly into it. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was scared.”

“Of what?”

Of the very real skeletons in the closet. Of the bogeyman and the monsters under the bed. Of putting down roots that she couldn’t sever when she had to. 

“I was scared of losing you.”

Lila just shook her head, as if the very thought of it was too ridiculous to be considered. 

And Natasha wanted to laugh, to scream with joy because she had brought a little girl into the world, and she was safe. And she was so safe that she didn’t even know that she was safe. She didn’t know what not-being-safe felt like. And, more than that: she was smart and she was beautiful and she didn’t take shit and she was sitting beside her in the sunset _holding her hand._

Her palm was dry and soft, and her nails dug in ever so slightly as she held on tighter. 

“What about my— the guy? Does he know?”

“No.” Natasha shook her head. “It was easier not to.” She couldn’t help but feel Clint’s hand on her shoulder, a gentle, encouraging squeeze. “Do you want to know?”

Lila nodded.

“He was nice. We had a good evening. I looked him up a few years ago.” She paused a moment. _Nine. Nine years ago, almost exactly._ When she’d been unmoored from everything, and all she’d found was yet another lost soul grieving for his family. What could she have told him? _We had a daughter, but I lost her too?_ She’d walked away. “He’s a teacher. He moved to Delaware. He has two other kids. If you want to, we can try and contact him.”

But Lila shook her head, her shoulders shaking, not just crying but weeping. Natasha reached for her, pulling her into her lap like she hadn’t done since she was a little girl, a sharp pain gnawing at her chest. “It’s ok. I’m sorry. We don’t have to do anything.”

But it wasn’t that. They both knew it wasn’t that. It was Clint, and his not being there, and the complete impossibility of anyone ever filling that hole. And anger at him for leaving. And gratitude for why and how and for giving them this moment, at the expense of all the others they might have had. 

The sun had just dipped below the trees, and the eastern sky was darkening. Life turns on a dime. Every careful lie, every loose end stamped out, every sleepless night, and none of it had mattered in the face of a little altruism, a few casual questions and a smart teenager who saw too much. But Natasha was strangely calm. The fear hadn’t left her. It was never going to leave her. And her night would be spent crafting keeping _Lila safe - Plans L through Z._

But there was always something else. And tonight it was the crumbling of another wall, another layer between herself and the world. It was a woman (girl) who was confused and overwhelmed, but who had never once turned her back. It was Lila’s head on her shoulder and her fingers in her hair and whatever happened next was something new, maybe even better than before.

“Lila.” She murmured, not wanting to break the spell, but keenly aware of time marching on and the imminent crunch of gravel on the driveway that would herald Laura and the boys’ return. “They’ll be home soon. What do you want to do?”

Lila shrugged silently, looking so lost and far away. “Can we just stay here, for a little while?”

“Sure. We can stay here as long as you want.”

… 

_It’s the deepest part of the night and the grass is silvering in the moonlight. Laura steps out to join her._

_“How are you doing?” She asks._

_“I don’t know. You?”_

_“God knows.”_

_Natasha smirks and Laura sits on the step, her body heat crossing the few inches of space between them, “She wants to tell Marley.”_

_Air rushes between Natasha’s teeth, “Yeah.” She sighs dramatically, “It was so much easier when her closest friend was a toy bunny.”_

_“You sound like Clint.” Natasha rolls her eyes and Laura squeezes her arm, “What are you gonna do?”_

_She pauses thoughtfully, watching the swing-set across the yard and the shadow of the picnic table down by the stream. Her knee aches and she’s slower than she used to be. But the shadows in the darkness are somehow smaller too._

_“Same as always. Hold on to what I have.”_

_Laura smiles._

_Nothing changes, really._


End file.
